The mechanical loss of tin (II) oxide thin-film coatings for charge mitigation in future gravitational wave detectors

Abstract

Electrostatic charging of the mirrors and suspensions in interferometric gravitational wave detectors may compromise aspects of both the sensitivity and control of current and planned instruments. The use of conductive coatings of tin (II) oxide as a possible charge mitigation technique is investigated here, where we report measurements of the optical loss and mechanical loss for the first time at frequencies of interest for gravitational wave detection.

Additional Information

© 2012 IOP Publishing. Received 24 March 2011, in final form 26 October 2011; Published 12 January 2012. We would like to thank our colleagues in the GEO600 project, the LSC–Virgo collaboration and within SUPA for their interest in this work. The authors would also like to thank Clive Speake for useful discussions. We are grateful for the financial support provided by Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the University of Glasgow in the UK. We would also like to thank the NSF in the USA (award nos PHY-05 02641 and PHY-07 57896). SR is supported by an RSE/Scottish Government Research Fellowship and IM is supported by an STFC Postdoctoral Fellowship. We would also like to thank Professor C Speake, Professor J E Faller and Micro-g Lacoste, Boulder, CO, for useful discussions. This paper has LIGO DCC number P1100018.

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